


secondhand smoke

by spibsy (lucy_and_ramona)



Category: Professional Wrestling, World Wrestling Entertainment
Genre: Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Ableism, Canon-Typical Violence, Car Sex, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, M/M, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-07-15
Updated: 2017-10-19
Packaged: 2018-07-24 05:23:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 15,758
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7495548
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lucy_and_ramona/pseuds/spibsy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>seth and dean have known each other for a very long time. they have traveled every road in the country and most outside of it, and all of it with each other. two people are bound to get to know each other after a while.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. June 24th, 2011

**Author's Note:**

> hi!! this is a project that began as a commission for my friend irene, and while it's still that, it got a bit longer than expected. regardless, i'm really excited about it and i hope y'all are, too! this story explores the development of seth and dean's relationship as told through various car rides they've been on together. the 'additional tags' that are listed in the header are for the entire story, not for this chapter specifically.
> 
> as a secondary note - i know this first chapter is based in fcw, but this is _not_ see your world in traces 2.0. it's just difficult to write the development of seth &dean without starting at the beginning. this is their beginning.

_**June 24th, 2011**_  
Dean likes to walk. 

Part of that, sure, comes from going without cars for a lot of his life. He sure didn’t like walking when he was a kid, having to walk to get to school and walk to get to the store and walk home carefully balancing twelve bags of groceries. But then he grew up, and when you grow up, you kind of learn that if you have to do something you hate, you might as well do your best to enjoy it.

So, Dean likes to walk. It helps him clear his head after a show, to make a steady pace beneath his feet, feel the solidity of the pavement. 

There’s a difference, though, between walking in most other places and walking in Florida. Walking in Florida is constantly like you’ve just wrestled for an hour and now you’re just walking around covered in sweat and grime, except it’s like that when you’ve just showered, too. It always kind of feels like you’re sweating even if you’re not, in Florida.

Still, Dean needs to get from the FCW arena (barely an arena, really doesn’t qualify for the word, but Dean likes that; he likes that he works for the fucking WWE now and he’s still wrestling in what’s essentially a glorified school gym) back to his apartment, which is still in Winter Park, but about four or five miles east. That’s nothing, not really – Dean’s a pretty damn good walker – and he’s made the walk before, looking up at the sky, occasionally catching a glimpse of a star or two where the light from the city hasn’t faded the sky brown.

When a car’s headlights catch on him on a turn, he doesn’t pay much attention. Cars are a nuisance at worst when he’s walking, and most pass him right on by. There’s a couple times since he’s been here when he’s gotten drunken shouts out a window, but Winter Park isn’t exactly a party city, so they’re few and far between.

It’s new, though, that the car slows down just before it reaches him, coming to a near stop to keep pace. The window rolls down, and Dean glances toward it, curious. He doesn’t stop walking.

“Ambrose?” The voice is familiar, the accent flat and Midwestern in a different way to Dean’s. He likes to think he doesn’t sound that nasal, but he’s probably wrong. Everyone from Ohio thinks they don’t sound that nasal, and all of them do.

“Rollins,” Dean notes. He’s seen Seth Rollins around; guy’d been there for a while before Dean got the call to sign, and he’s doing pretty well for himself in FCW. Dean wonders if there’s anyplace Rollins _hasn’t_ done pretty well for himself. He seems like the kind of guy who refuses to be anything but the very best.

“What’re you doing?” Rollins asks, and Dean looks sardonically down at his own feet, then back to Rollins’ face peering out the car window at him.

“I’m walking,” he says unnecessarily. “I’d’ve thought that was pretty obvious.”

Rollins’ mouth turns down at the corner like he doesn’t appreciate Dean’s tone. Well, Dean doesn’t appreciate people who don’t appreciate his tone, so fuck him.

“Okay, I’ll rephrase,” says Rollins. “Why are you walking?”

“Same reason most people walk,” Dean replies. “To get to the place I want to be.”

Rollins sighs like Dean’s trying his patience. What a drama queen. He’s the one infringing on Dean’s space, not the other way around. “Where are you trying to get to?” he asks. 

“Show’s over, darlin’,” says Dean, shoving his hands into his pockets. “I’m goin’ home. To get some sleep? You might’ve heard of it?”

“And you’re walking?” This time Dean can’t place the tone in Rollins’ voice, but from experience, he could assume it’s something like pity and probably not be far off. He’s not offended – he hates pity and being pitied as a concept, but Seth Rollins means exactly nothing to him, and his opinion of Dean even less.

“Gotta get there somehow,” says Dean.

Rollins pauses for a moment. He’s still keeping pretty good pace with Dean, the car moving at a slow crawl. Burning up gas like a motherfucker, Dean wants to tell him.

“Want a ride?”

Dean was half expecting that and half not at all, and it delays his response a second.

“I’m okay, thanks,” he says. He doesn’t think Rollins was expecting that, because he sputters a little. 

“Your place has to be six or seven miles away, at least, and that’s assuming you live in the city—“

“—I do—“

“—still! Just get in the car. Let me give you a ride home.”

“It’s good cardio, walking,” Dean says breezily. “Don’t worry about it.”

“Ambrose,” Rollins needles. “Come on. You can owe me if it’ll make you feel better about it.”

“I don’t want to owe you,” Dean says. He thinks that’s pretty reasonable. “Not to mention you obviously have your own car. Why would I owe you a ride somewhere when you have a car and I don’t?” 

Rollins makes a noise like some birds Dean’s heard early in the mornings. “Come on,” he says again. “If you don’t I’m just gonna keep driving like this until you do.”

Dean weighs his options. For some reason, this seems important to Rollins, and although the petty, childish part of Dean (which usually wins out) finds that to be more of a reason to keep telling him no, there’s part of him that’s curious enough about why Rollins wants to give him a ride so bad to give it a shot.

He sighs, making a show of how put out he is. “I guess,” he says. “Only because you’re annoying and I like peace and quiet.”

Rollins’ face lights up, as much as Dean can see in the dark. Not a bad-looking guy. Not that this is the first time Dean’s looked at him, but, well. He’s better looking when he smiles. In the ring he takes himself too seriously.

The car stops (was almost at a stop anyway) and Dean swings around the front to pop open the passenger side door and slow himself into the front seat. He wrinkles his nose almost immediately, closing the door and then digging beneath the seat for the lever to control how far back it goes.

“Who was sitting here before me, Hornswoggle?” he demands to know, adjusting the seat until his knees aren’t shoved up to his chin.

“Yeah, my best bud,” says Rollins. He puts the car back in gear and Dean looks down with slight surprise. 

“Wouldn’t’ve pegged you for a guy who drives stick,” he notes.

“It’s what I learned on.” Rollins eases on the gas, and doesn’t look over at Dean. “My first car was a stick-shift. I only learned how to drive manual when I was like twenty-two.”

“And how old are you now?” It’s only polite, Dean thinks, to make conversation. Guy’s giving him a ride home, he can pretend to be a polite person for a few minutes. “Twenty-two and a half?”

“Funny,” says Rollins, and Dean likes the way he says it, sarcastic sarcasm, like it wasn’t funny but he kind of wanted to laugh anyway. “No. Twenty-five. Just turned twenty-five end of last month.”

“Not doing too bad for yourself, huh?” asks Dean. He keeps looking out the front windshield, even though he can see Rollins look at him out of the corner of his eye, maybe trying to measure Dean’s sincerity. Well, he’ll have good luck with that – Dean prides himself on never being obviously sincere. 

“Doing all right,” Rollins agrees after a moment. He turns back to look at the road, thank god, and Dean takes the opportunity to get his own look over at Rollins in.

He looks young. That’s probably the most obvious thing about him (when he’s got a shirt on, at least), that he looks his age. Dean wonders if that’s why he grew the beard, to make himself look older. It works, a little, maybe. He looks his actual age instead of twenty, with those Bambi eyes and his hair long. Dean wonders what he’d look like with short hair. Or no beard. Or maybe both.

He tries to picture it. The Rollins in his head looks about twelve years old. He probably wouldn’t look _that_ young, but he looks pretty damn young already, so Dean’s not sure.

“You have any idea when they’re bringing you up to television?” Rollins asks. His fingers drum on the steering wheel. Dean wonders if he’s regretting picking Dean up, if he hadn’t thought this all the way through.

Dean shrugs a shoulder carelessly. “Nah,” he tosses out. “Keep hearing different things. First they were telling me this month sometime, now they’re saying they might push me back until August. Long as I’m still getting paid, I don’t care much. It’s nice to be able to afford dinner and not have to like, shove glass in my eye to do it.”

He stops talking. He hadn’t meant to give that much of himself away, and he can tell from the way Rollins looks over at him again that Rollins caught exactly all of the things in that comment that Dean hadn’t wanted to come through.

Dean waits, tense, for Rollins to bring any of those things up.

“What’s it like?” Rollins asks, which actually isn’t what Dean was expecting him to. He does like surprises. “All that death match stuff. I’ve never really… it wasn’t my area of expertise.”

“You don’t say.” Dean smiles to himself thinking about Seth fucking Rollins of all people trying to navigate a match that has nothing, really, to do with technical wrestling, and everything to do with making the other person hurt as much as physically possible. “I dunno. It was work. Like I know it was probably different from what you’re used to, but it was all just wrestling, for me. Just different strategies.”

“Hm.” Rollins actually sounds interested; points for him. “Y’ever actually shove glass in your eye?”

Dean actually laughs at that, and he thinks that might surprise Rollins, from his little jump. “Not on purpose, nah. Had it shoved in there for me, though. Lotta accidental glass to the eye, too. Sometimes you’re just looking the wrong way, y’know.”

“I really don’t know,” says Rollins, but he’s nodding anyway. “What d’you like better?”

“I told you,” Dean replies, “it’s all the same to me. It’s all wrestling, whether it’s with someone like you or someone who’s using a cheese grater on me.”

“Jesus, ow,” Rollins says. “I’ve only seen that kind of shit on old ECW tapes.”

“Well, that’s kinda the point.” Dean shrugs. “Promotions that do death match shit are just trying to emulate ECW, for the most part. I’m sure some of ‘em would say they don’t, they’re better, but that’s all horseshit, you know. Everything’s inspired by something else. Nothing’s original anymore.”

“That’s kind of a cynical way to look at it,” says Rollins. He looks over at Dean and this time, Dean looks back at him. Rollins is kind of frowning. “Just because something’s inspired by something else doesn’t mean it can’t be original.”

“That’s the definition of the word unoriginal,” Dean points out. “If you’re getting all your shit from other places, which, come on, that’s what wrestling _is_ , it’s not original. You’re looking at it the wrong way.”

“What way am I looking at it?”

“You’re looking at it like something’s gotta be original to be good,” says Dean. He thinks Rollins is actually, genuinely listening to him. He feels weird about that. He expected Rollins to be… different. “Just ‘cause it’s inspired by something else don’t mean it’s not any good, it just means it’s been done before. But everything’s been done before. So stop looking at it like you’ve gotta be the first person to do something for it to matter.”

“I didn’t think that’s how I was looking at it,” Rollins mutters, and his mouth is set all the way in a frown now, the corners turned down. “How’d you do that?”

“Do what?” Dean asks. He fiddles with the string coming off the hole in the knee of his jeans. “I’m just talking, man.”

“No, you—“ Rollins huffs a little, blowing out a stream of air before he continues. “You took this, this really negative sounding thing, like, a word everybody thinks of as a negative thing, and you made it a positive thing.”

“Well, it’s not my problem other people think wrong.” Now Dean’s frowning. He’s not sure what Rollins is trying to say. He’s just saying things the way he thinks them. He doesn’t think of shit like that, positive and negative, right and wrong. It’s just how something is or how something isn’t. And sometimes someone else thinks something else, and that’s on them. Got nothing to do with Dean.

“So unoriginality is a good thing?” Rollins says. He sounds skeptical, which he should, because now he’s just saying dumb shit.

“Don’t put words in my mouth, ‘specially when they’re stupid words.” Dean rolls his eyes and deliberately stretches his legs out as far as they’ll go. “I just don’t think it’s got to be a bad thing. I don’t think it’s anything, by itself. It’s just a word. People use words all the time, and they use them wrong, like, what does unoriginal even mean if you use it like that?”

“It means not original,” says Rollins. Smartass.

“Yeah,” Dean responds. “And that’s all it means. It just means something’s not original. The definition’s not, it doesn’t say in the dictionary next to unoriginal, it doesn’t say ‘a real bad thing to be.’ Because it’s not, on its own.”

“I don’t understand.” It sounds like it was hard for Rollins to say, and Dean can appreciate that. He doesn’t like admitting when he doesn’t get stuff, either.

“Okay, look,” Dean says, sitting up straight, since this is apparently a real big boy conversation he’s having. “Like, uh, has anyone ever compared you to anyone? The way you wrestle?”

Rollins’ mouth twists a little. “Yeah, I guess,” he says, hesitant, like he thinks this is a trick.

“Let me guess, Shawn Michaels? I bet you get Michaels a lot,” says Dean.

Rollins’ shoulder hunch, just a little. “I – maybe. Once or twice,” he allows.

“And were you like, holy shit, how dare you compare me to one of the best wrestlers of all time,” asks Dean, “or were you like, wow, actually, that’s a real big fuckin’ compliment?”

“Oh,” Rollins says, with vague surprise in his voice. “I guess I never really. I guess I just never thought about it like that.”

“Well, you should start. You’d be a lot less uptight.” Dean pats Rollins on his shoulder, a quick one-two hey-chum kind of pat, which surprises both of them, he thinks.

“I’m not uptight,” Rollins argues. He’s still all frowny; his forehead’s gonna wrinkle prematurely if he keeps doing that. “What the hell, you don’t even know me.”

“You got real uptight over me calling you uptight,” Dean points out. God, is he actually having fun? Antagonizing Rollins has really made his night better. He should say thanks. This is much better than walking home by himself would have been.

“That’s not—!” Rollins sputters. “What about me is uptight?”

Dean takes a moment to consider what will piss off Rollins the most. “You just kinda look like it, man,” he says. “Like, high-maintenance. I bet you like your coffee one way and you refuse to drink it if it’s not that way.”

“Everybody has a way they like their coffee!” Rollins protests.

“I bet you,” says Dean, “I bet you have a _routine_. I bet you wake up every morning and you know exactly what you’re going to do every day.”

“Well, what does that have to do with anything?” Rollins asks. He’s full-on sulking now, and this is the most fun Dean’s had in quite a while. “I’m not uptight because I have a schedule.”

“Not just because you have a schedule,” Dean corrects. “You just look uptight, y’know. Like when you look at someone and you’re like, how small is your dog? Real small, I bet.”

Rollins’ lips press together hard. Dean would bet any amount of money that Rollins’ dog is real, real small.

“I would think uptight people would have cats,” says Rollins. His hands have gone tighter around the steering wheel, and Dean doesn’t point out how uptight Rollins is being about how uptight he is again.

“Rookie mistake.” Dean shakes his head sadly. “Y’see, cat people are actually super not uptight because their animals need no upkeep. Cats don’t _need_ humans. Cats don’t give a shit about humans. Cat owners only know their cats are there when the cat’s like, hey, scratch my belly. Taking care of a dog is a full time job. Taking care of a cat is like, like having a roommate who works weird hours and poops in a box.”

Rollins doesn’t say anything to that, which Dean’s a little upset about, because he’s pretty proud of that analogy. The next mile passes in silence. Dean’s started recognizing buildings as being in his neighborhood, so maybe he and Rollins just won’t speak to each other for the rest of this ride.

No luck. Or maybe good luck – Dean’s enjoying this conversation, as much as he enjoys any conversation these days.

“I still don’t think I’m uptight,” Rollins finally says, but his frown’s relaxed a little, like he’s hearing what Dean’s saying at least. “But I get what you mean. I don’t agree with it, but I see why that’s how you think.”

“Thanks,” says Dean. He doesn’t even try to make it sound less sarcastic than he wants to. “I’m glad I have your blessing.”

Rollins rolls his eyes and it’s so aggressively _young_ that Dean laughs. He’s not even much older than Rollins, he doesn’t think, but despite his talent, the way Rollins carries himself fluctuates between upstanding member of a prominent company and twelve year old boy fighting with his parents.

Dean likes it. It’s charming.

“That’s not what I meant,” says Rollins. He’s starting to sound all prissy again and Dean likes the way that he seems to realize it, making a face at himself. When he starts speaking again, he sounds less fussy, anyway. “I just meant I understood. Why do you turn everything into some sort of slight against you?”

“’Cause it usually is.” Dean slowly pops his gum. He’s more charmed than he’d like to be by how this legitimate stranger thinks he knows Dean so well, because he’s not wrong, at least not so far. And Dean admires that he’s got the balls to pretend, even if he doesn’t. “People don’t like me very much.”

“Are you sure you don’t encourage that?” Rollins asks, glancing sideways at him. “I mean, you really don’t seem the type to… endear yourself to people.”

“You saying you don’t like me?” Dean asks, only half caring about the answer.

Rollins sputters a little. God, that’s fun. “No, I – I don’t even know – No,” he finally says conclusively. “I’m saying you don’t seem like you really care about what other people think of you.”

“That’s a very diplomatic way of putting it.” Dean grins and blows a bubble. It gets stuck on the bristles where he hasn’t shaved in a few days and, annoyed, he shoves it back into his mouth with his thumb.

“Is it a wrong way of putting it?” Rollins asks.

Dean muses on that for a few seconds. “Nah, not really,” says Dean. “Lemme guess, you do?”

“Do what?” 

“Care about what people think about you,” Dean prompts. “Get real upset if someone doesn’t like you?”

Rollins’ mouth twists. “I don’t think people who get upset when someone doesn’t like them survive long in this industry,” he points out. Dean concedes the point with a nod of his head.

“Yeah, but you know what I mean,” he says. “People you respect. Not just random fucks who wanna tell you how to do your job, like, actual people who matter.”

“Doesn’t everyone get upset when people they admire don’t like them?” Rollins asks.

“Not if you don’t admire anybody.” Dean winks at Rollins, though it’s kind of pointless since Rollins is still looking at the road. “There’s just a difference, you know, between getting upset about it and taking it into consideration. It’s about realizing there are people who might know more about something than you do.”

There’s a long pause, and then Rollins says, “I can’t picture you ever thinking anybody knows more about anything than you do.”

Dean laughs, full-on, a big belly laugh powered by surprise. Surprise that Rollins up and said something like that, something that wouldn’t have been out of place if it had ended with ‘you egotistical jackass,’ frank and honest. Lord, Dean’s surprised someone hasn’t eaten this kid up, saying everything he’s feeling every second of the day like that.

Not a kid, really. Old enough to know better than to go around with his thoughts out loud like that. But Dean appreciates that at least someone in this locker room isn’t a total bore to be around.

“Not many people do, you’re right about that,” acknowledges Dean, still knuckling under his eyes where they started watering. “I’m pretty much top authority on everything.”

Rollins is smiling now, Dean can tell without even looking at him. “Except how to get people to like you,” he says.

Dean waves a hand, dismissive. “No, no, you got me all wrong. I know how to get people to like you, I’m real good at it. I know exactly how to fake your way into someone’s good graces. I just don’t bother ‘cause it’s stupid and if someone don’t like me for me then fuck ‘em. I got better things to do with my time and better people to do ‘em with.”

“That’s a pretty idealistic way of looking at things,” says Rollins, which Dean hadn’t been expecting. He’d be lying if he said he wasn’t intrigued.

“How so?” he asks, leaning back in his seat. He crosses his ankles one over the other and waits patiently. Rollins doesn’t look like he was expecting _that_ , and it takes him a second to start talking. It’s darling, really; Dean wants to pinch his cheeks or some shit.

He knows logically that he’s only like six months older than Rollins, but he feels a fucking decade older than this guy, with his big booboo eyes and his penchant for saying whatever’s on his mind. There’s got to be more to him than that, though; you don’t get this far by just being a cute loudmouth. There’s a lot of those in this business and they usually get beat down until they’re not that anymore. You’ve got to be more to make it to the big time, there’s got to be something more to Rollins and Dean wants to find out what and he wants to know _now_.

He’s not a very patient man.

“I just think it’s really optimistic to think you don’t need anybody to like you,” says Rollins, finally. “Especially here, where people liking you is the only way you’ll ever get farther than gyms and high school auditoriums. Sure, you can say you don’t need to be liked to get far, and that could be true, whatever, but you gotta be liked by _someone_ for _something_. If someone doesn’t like you for you here then you become someone else. That’s just… I mean, that’s how it works.”

Dean’s eyebrows have slowly been raising throughout this little speech, and when Rollins goes quiet again, Dean finds himself reluctantly impressed by the logic. It’s more coldblooded than Dean might have expected from ol’ booboo eyes.

“Adapt or perish, huh?” he asks. He peers at Rollins, trying to see what his face is doing, how the expression is changing. “That’s remarkably cynical for someone like you.”

“Hell does that mean, someone like me?”

Dean just gestures to Rollins, because it’s obvious, isn’t it – the face, the title, the flips and shit in the ring. He’s got future company golden boy written all over him.

Rollins doesn’t seem to feel the same way, though, because he just looks over at Dean, narrow-eyed and for long enough that Dean feels tempted to reach over and push his face so that it’s looking back out the fucking windshield, Rollins, what the fuck, you’re in control of a motor vehicle. He doesn’t do that, but he does motion broadly until Rollins looks back to the road.

“What does that mean?” Rollins repeats, glaring sulkily out the windshield.

“Y’know,” says Dean, purely because he knows it’ll piss Rollins off some more.

“Clearly I don’t, Ambrose,” Rollins says.

“Like, look at you,” says Dean. “You’re exactly what they’re looking for, obviously. There’s no way you’ve had to adapt anything about you because you is what they want.”

“I don’t know what you mean by that,” says Rollins, like Dean’s being at all unclear, but he looks less grumpy. “If I was exactly what they’re looking for, I’d be a foot taller and on the main roster already.”

His hands visibly clench on the steering wheel. Dean wonders if some of those rumors are true that he’s heard, about Rollins clamoring to be called up and getting shot down. He’s probably ready, just skill-wise, but maturity-wise Dean thinks he’s probably got a ways to go.

Then again, Dean’s been sure he was ready for the main roster since the day he started wrestling, so maybe he shouldn’t be making any noise about egos getting in the way of sense.

“Right, because you’re doing so badly for yourself in the meantime,” Dean says. 

Rollins shrugs a shoulder. “Best here is still nothing there,” he mutters. Okay, a _lot_ more cynical than Dean had originally anticipated. He’s not sure how he feels about that. He thinks he might like it, but he doesn’t particularly like _that_.

He doesn’t like, actually, how endeared he is by Rollins in general. He keeps catching himself being charmed by the guy, in little ways, and he thinks: oh. That’s probably how he gets you.

It’s a startling thought, that maybe Dean’s gotten swept up in someone’s tricks. Not even tricks, really, just what Rollins had been saying before, christ, he’d all but _told_ Dean he knows exactly how to make himself likeable no matter who he’s talking to. He wasn’t even being subtle about it and Dean still fell for it.

He’s still impressed, just in a more pissed off way. It’s a completely different kind of manipulative from what Dean’s used to, from what Dean _is_ – Dean gets people to underestimate him by manipulating their perceptions of him, how they look at him, what they think he’s capable of. He’s decent at it. This, though, what Rollins is, what he’s been doing this whole conversation, that’s… not something Dean’s dealt a lot with.

He’s manipulated Dean into _liking_ him.

God, Dean hates him for that.

“Hey, so, I don’t actually know where you live, dude,” says Rollins after a few beats of silence, only interrupted by Dean drumming his fingers against the arm rest. “I’m just kind of driving around in a circle hoping eventually you’ll be like, take a right.”

“Oh.” Dean’s still angry, but he would eventually like to get home, especially if home means away from Seth Rollins, who is some kind of wizard but not in a cool way. “Left, actually. On Sinclair.”

“Gotcha.” Rollins takes a smooth left, steering with his wrist like a douche. God, everything about him is the worst. How did Dean not realize it? Has his time here really dulled his senses that much?

“Right,” says Dean when they get to an intersection, and Rollins nods. His eyebrows are pulled together a little. Dean wonders if it has something to do with his sudden reticence. He hopes so. _Fuck you_ , he mutters in his head.

“Are you a cat person or a dog person?” asks Rollins out of nowhere, and Dean blinks. Is that what he’s been thinking this whole time? Dean hates him. 

“Dog,” he answers. He doesn’t think Rollins can do anything with that information, though he has no doubt he’s cataloguing it just in case he can use it against Dean later.

Rollins nods again, and his frown has eased. “That mean you’re an uptight person, too?”

“Nah, no, because I don’t _have_ a dog, I just am a dog _person_ ,” Dean says. He’d have thought that was obvious, but maybe Rollins still doesn’t understand the small details here. “I just like dogs better. But I would never get one because I’m not uptight enough to want my entire life to be scheduled around something that eats garbage and shits outside.”

“I have a Yorkie,” says Rollins. It sounds like a confession, and maybe it would be, if Dean hadn’t already figured out the guy had to have the tiniest dog in the fucking world.

“Fuckin’ told you,” he mumbles.

“You didn’t have to tell me I own a little dog, I already knew that,” says Rollins. “Considering it’s, you know, my dog.”

“God, shut the fuck up forever,” says Dean. It’s the most honest thing he’s ever said in his life, probably, but Rollins just laughs like it’s a funny joke, and turns left when Dean irritably flaps a hand in that direction.

It’s past midnight now, almost half past, and Dean’s stuck in a car with someone who thinks it’s funny when he tells him to shut the fuck up and also is probably an evil mastermind. Not that Dean can’t appreciate a good evil mastermind, he fancies himself a fair one on a good day, but not when they’re using their freaky mind powers on _him_.

The worst part is that Dean knows it’s nothing like that, nothing supernatural, nothing more than humans and what humans can do. Rollins isn’t a wizard. He’s just a guy who’s good at getting what he wants.

There’s a chance that he doesn’t even know how good he is at it. Dean doubts that very much, though. He’s pretty sure Rollins knows exactly how good he is, knows that he can get someone to like him with a smile and a few well placed words.

Maybe Dean’s just paranoid. It wouldn’t be the first time. But he’d rather be too paranoid and keep himself from getting fucked over than think the best of someone he doesn’t know and get himself screwed.

“First building on the left,” Dean grunts, and Rollins pulls into the lot of his apartment building, which fucking sucks; now Rollins knows where he lives. What if he does something with that? Dean doesn’t know what he might do, but… something. It’s possible.

“All good?” Rollins asks, pulling up in front. He doesn’t seem to have noticed that Dean’s on to him, which could work to Dean’s advantage. If Rollins thinks Dean likes him, thinks Dean’s all grateful to him, he won’t be expecting it when Dean shows him that he doesn’t, that he isn’t.

“Yeah,” Dean says. He even manages a smile, and it feels as natural as any smile does, when he turns it toward Rollins. “Hey, thanks again for the ride, man.”

Rollins looks surprised, and pleasantly so. He tucks some of his hair behind his ear. “Uh, no problem, man. Any time. Well, maybe not any time, because sometimes I won’t be there, or you’ll probably have another—“ Rollins cuts himself off, and seems to roll his eyes at himself, and Dean punches down the part of himself that still finds Rollins constant exasperation with his own personality charming. “Any time,” he repeats, firmly.

“Careful, man might take you up on an offer like that,” says Dean. He lets his fingers linger on the door handle, reluctant to leave, or appearing so. He can’t figure out which, whether he’s pretending to be charmed or actually charmed but pretending to not be but pretending to be. This is why he fucking hates Seth Rollins. He can’t figure out his own damn feelings, now, and he hates when he can’t figure out his own damn feelings.

“Wouldn’t make it if I was worried about being taken up on it,” Rollins smiles at him, tentative, sort of, and Dean smiles back. He hopes it looks less insincere than it feels.

“I guess I’ll probably see you around,” Dean says. He finally opens the door, and leans one leg out of it.

“Yeah, yeah, sure. Let me know when you’re coming up to television, I want to be around to see it,” says Rollins.

“No problem.” Dean can feel his smile get wider. “I’ll make sure you’re in the building before it happens.”

He swings his other leg out of the car before he can give anything away. Rollins, behind him, is a presence Dean can’t shake, like a shadow he can feel.

“See you around, Ambrose,” Rollins says.

Dean tips a wave over his shoulder. He’ll make sure Rollins sees him sooner rather than later. He just has to hope the powers that be won’t mind him debuting on TV by calling out their favorite boy.


	2. October 11th, 2012

_**October 11th, 2012**  
_ Nobody in Winter Park knows how to fucking drive.

If there’s one thing Dean knows, it’s that. He’s known that since he first moved down here, and while it’s true all over the state of Florida, it’s especially true here. Of course, he might just be thinking that because he has a destination to get to within a certain time frame, and if the old lady in front of him doesn’t get a fucking move on he’s gonna lose it.

By the time he makes it to Full Sail, it’s fifteen minutes past when he _wanted_ to be there and he’s preemptively steamed that he probably missed who he’s looking for, but – no, perfect timing, actually. Rollins is lingering outside the arena, on his phone, leaning casually against the door of a car that Dean assumes is his own.

He thinks for a moment about waiting until Rollins is done with his conversation, but honestly he really doesn’t _feel_ like it. His time is important and he doesn’t have to be here. Isn’t supposed to be here, actually – he’s been banned from NXT since it started, and he hasn’t been back since he practically killed William Regal.

His stomach still flutters pleasantly when he thinks about that. God, that was beautiful, what he did to that man.

He can tell the moment that Rollins spots him because he full-on stops in the middle of whatever conversation he’s having. Good. Even better when Rollins clearly says something into his phone about calling the other person back, and hangs up.

“Dean Ambrose,” says Rollins, taking a careful step toward Dean’s car, which is blocking the entire parking lot aisle, but he doesn’t give a shit. “As I live and breathe.”

“Long time, no see,” Dean says. He flexes his hand on the steering wheel. This is delicate, even if Rollins doesn’t know yet that it’s delicate. He can’t be too… not himself. If he’s too weird, Rollins won’t trust him. If he’s not weird enough, though, Rollins also won’t trust him.

For a moment, just a moment, Dean kind of regrets antagonizing the other man so damn much. He regains his senses after a second, though, because antagonizing Rollins has always been one of his favorite things to do, ever since he met the man.

“What brings you here?” asks Rollins. There’s a little suspicion on his face, but not so much that this seems impossible.

Dean’s not even positive anymore what _this_ is, what he’s about to try to convince Rollins of. He’ll make it up as he goes. Winging it has always kind of been his specialty.

“I owe you a ride,” says Dean, unsure if Rollins will even remember what he’s talking about – but Rollins’ eyes light up, just a little, even though the rest of his face stays vaguely polite.

Rollins leans heavily onto one leg, his gym bag resting on his cocked hip. His lips twist. “Little hesitant to get into a car with you,” he says, and there’s that goddamn forthrightness Dean hates and loves and hates, god, fuck this guy. But Dean needs him. Rollins continues, “Last time I saw you, you’d nearly killed William Regal.”

Dean snorts. “Like you give two shits about Regal,” he says. “’Sides, that was forever ago. Months now. I’m all better now. Lemme give you a ride home or I’ll slash your tires or something, c’mon.”

Rollins laughs, and it sounds like he doesn’t want to. “Jesus. That supposed to be convincing?”

“I owe you,” Dean stresses. “I don’t like owing people, ‘specially goody-two-shoes losers like you. Get in the car.”

“Your bedside manner could use some work,” Rollins says pointedly, and yet, Dean notices, he still hasn’t outright said _no_ at all. Maybe Dean’s read this right after all.

“Get _in_ the _car_ ,” says Dean.

By some miracle, Rollins does.

“You better not pull a knife on me or anything,” Rollins says, prissy even now, hefting his bag more securely onto his shoulder and edging around the front of Dean’s car to the passenger door.

“How pedestrian,” says Dean, but he can’t keep the little smile of victory off his face. “Who needs a knife when you got fists?”

Rollins rolls his eyes. “Look, if I get into this car,” he says, the door already open, “you’re gonna tell me the real reason you’re here, right?”

Dean pauses, because that’s pretty astute of Rollins – he wouldn’t have thought it weird if Rollins took it at face value that Dean doesn’t like owing people things – and then eases off the brake.

“Sure thing,” he says. That was his plan, anyway. No skin off his back. And it makes Rollins actually get in the car, too. Rollins shoves his bag into the footwell and rests his legs on top of it, closing the door with a satisfying thunk.

“You know where I live, or?” Rollins asks. Dean can’t place the tone of his voice. It’s not quite apprehensive, and there might even be a hint of dry amusement there.

“Yep,” says Dean. Rollins doesn’t look surprised in the slightest, just sighs and rolls down his window a little.

“How’ve you been?” Dean asks charitably. He thinks it’s charitably, at least. Rollins looks at him like he’s lost his mind. “What?” asks Dean, defensive.

“Nothing,” says Rollins. He shakes his head. “Been good. Fine. Better than. Champion and everything.”

“Oh, right, you’re the champion now,” Dean says, as though he hadn’t watched the entire fuckin’ tournament thing. “Congrats.”

“Ambrose.” Rollins sounds unimpressed. “Come on. Get to your point.”

“I’m being polite,” says Dean, holding a hand to his chest while he steers with his other wrist. “I thought people like you liked shit like that?”

“People like me.” It’s not a question.

“You know.” Dean waves his hand. “We talked about this. Little dog people.”

“Little d—“ Rollins cuts himself off. Dean doesn’t look at him, very focused on looking out the windshield, like a good motorist, but he can imagine the look on Rollins’ face. “Right. Little dog people.”

Rollins has gotten better, at least. He doesn’t immediately jump to his own defense.

“Anyway,” says Rollins, instead of talking Dean’s ear off about how not uptight he is for the next twenty minutes. “You being polite is real weird, actually, so I’d rather you just tell me what all this is about.”

“Mm.” Dean replaces his hand on the steering wheel so that he can drum his fingers against the worn leather, satisfying and solid under his fingertips. “All right. So.”

He takes a moment to figure out how he wants to start this. Thankfully, Rollins doesn’t prod any more, just waits for Dean to start talking.

“You told me once,” says Dean abruptly. “I think it was like one of the first conversations we had, something like that, you told me that the best here is nothing _there_. That being the best in developmental didn’t matter because it wasn’t nothin’ until you were up on that main roster.”

“Uh-huh.” Rollins sounds a little confused.

“You still believe that?” asks Dean. All of it, really, hinges on the answer to this, and he doesn’t want to hold his breath while he waits for Rollins to respond, but this is. This is it. It’s not the whole thing, but it’s the beginning of the whole thing, and if you can’t even get started, it doesn’t even get the chance to end.

Dean takes a deep breath. Sometimes he really, really wishes his brain would just knock it the fuck off for a second or two.

“Yeah, I guess,” says Rollins. Now he sounds thoughtful. “Yeah. Like, it’s. I don’t want to sound ungrateful. I’m really glad I’ve gotten this opportunity, to be the NXT champion, the _first_ champion even, to be the first of anything is nice, y’know, but. The best here isn’t anything there.”

Dean has to relax his fingers where he’s gripping the steering wheel too hard. “Right. Yeah. Good.”

“Good?” Rollins asks.

“Yeah, good. Okay, I got a way we can both get on the main roster, but it’s gotta be both of us, and I don’t know if you’re gonna be able to keep that title.”

There. It’s out. Dean chews his lip nervously, then makes himself stop.

The silence seems never ending.

Then: “What the fuck are you talking about?”

Okay, not great, but Rollins hasn’t jumped out of the car, so it could’ve been worse.

“So, I got a call a couple weeks ago,” says Dean, “from Paul Heyman. He’s looking for a couple guys from developmental who, you know, maybe he could use as backup, I’unno, I didn’t ask a whole lot of questions. He just asked if I was interested in getting onto Raw and I was like hell yeah, y’know, of course.”

“Of course,” says Rollins. It sounds like he’s just repeating what Dean’s said rather than agreeing, but whatever.

“But he needs more than just one guy – he asked me I guess because I’m not technically, you know, I’m not on the actual – I’m not in NXT, anyway, so I wasn’t a risk ‘cause I got no friends and nobody talks to me.” Dean waves an impatient hand. “Or _whatever_. Basically he told me to ask around, all subtle-like, see if there was anybody else who might not, who might be good at that. But you’re like the only person I ever voluntarily talk to.”

Rollins sputters. “You voluntarily talk to me – you just – you’re unbelievable, you know that? You don’t voluntarily talk to me, you shout at me and act like a fucking psychopath ‘cause you want my attention and cost me titles and – and you—!”

“Okay, so we have a little history,” says Dean. He can feel sweat trickle down the middle of his back. “I still _talked_ to you, though, and you’re the only one. You are the only one I talked to, even if it was ‘cause I hated you for trying to trick me into liking you.”

“What are you _talking_ about, tricking you into liking me?” Rollins asks. He’s shifting in his seat now, and Dean pre-emptively checks to make sure the doors are locked. “I gave you a ride home and like the next fucking week you called me out in the middle of the ring!”

“Yeah, ‘cause I didn’t like that you were being a sneaky little asshole trying to trick me into liking you!” Dean exclaims, gesturing with one hand and chancing a glance at Rollins, who… looks genuinely perplexed. Huh. “Remember, in the car, you tricked me, you, like, you were trying to be all charming and shit and get me to like you, playing mind games with me!”

“I wasn’t playing mind games with you!” Rollins says, and he’s nearly shouting now. “I just wanted you to like me, I wasn’t trying to trick you into doing it!”

Dean snorts. “Yeah, okay, ‘cause someone like you really really wants the approval of someone like me.”

“You keep doing this, like, you think it’s as easy as _people like me_ and _people like you_ ,” says Rollins. He seems to have made a deliberate effort to quiet down, which Dean appreciates. His ears ring when people yell at him. “And it’s not like that, or at least it’s not how I do things, I don’t know, maybe that’s how friendship goes where you’re from. I just thought you were interesting and maybe we had some stuff in common. You were really weird but I kind of like really weird. And you made me think about stuff.” Out of the corner of Dean’s eye, Rollins looks like he’s sulking. “I thought we kind of clicked; obviously I was wrong. But either way I wasn’t trying to trick you into anything.”

“Oh,” is all Dean says for about the next mile, tightening his grip on the steering wheel to feel the rough edges of it against his palms, wanting to rub his fingertips against each other, but he can’t, because he’s driving. “Sorry, then, I guess,” he says to cut through the silence.

“I didn’t do a very good job, I guess,” says Rollins. His arms are folded across his chest. “I’m kind of, I’m. Not really great at making friends on my own. I usually just… I was in a lot of tag teams, before I got here, so I could just piggyback off of my tag partner’s friends. On my own, I don’t…” He waves a hand half-heartedly, “… network, well.”

“I didn’t want you to network me,” says Dean, frowning.

Rollins smiles, wry. “Guess that’s my problem, then.”

Another short silence, and then Rollins sighs. “Okay, tell me more about this. Why me? And don’t tell me it’s because I’m the only person you talk to, because you don’t, first of all, and second of all, if Heyman’s trying to keep this quiet, maybe you should’ve picked someone with a little less brand loyalty?”

“You’re not a snitch,” says Dean immediately, dismissing what Rollins said. “Even if you didn’t wanna, I knew you wouldn’t tell anybody; not your style. And I figured you’re the only other person here as good as me, or near enough.”

“Thanks,” says Rollins, his voice still dry. “Okay, I guess that makes sense, or your kind of sense, at least. But what’s in this for me? I’m the champion, I’m gonna get called up eventually for sure. Why not bide my time and do this the old-fashioned way?”

Dean was really hoping Rollins wasn’t going to ask that. He chews the inside of his cheek enough to hurt a little bit, until he tastes copper, then stops. “I don’t know,” he finally admits. “I don’t got any good reasons, or even any bullshit convincing enough. I just know this is probably the only way I’m gonna get there, and if I’m gonna be in some sort of wrestling business partnership with someone, you’re the only person here I even kind of trust. So.”

He knows Rollins will appreciate the straightforwardness, but god does it feel wrong to be _honest_ to this degree. Part of him still wants to lie so badly, say whatever he can to convince Rollins, promise him things he can’t promise him. But Rollins is smart enough to see through that shit. Dean thinks, at least.

“So the only real reason for me to do this is to do something nice for you that completely destroys my reputation and potentially strips me of my title,” says Rollins. Fuck, it sounds really bad when you phrase it like that.

“Well it sounds like shit when you say it that way,” Dean mutters. He feels wound so tight that he’ll pop at any moment. It would be worst, but Rollins still sounds considering, which Dean doesn’t really understand.

“Kind of a shitty deal for me, yeah,” Rollins says. “Would it just be us two?”

“You’re actually still considering this?” Dean blurts out.

Rollins laughs, full-on laughs, tipping his head back against the head rest. “Anyone ever tell you you’d be a godawful politician?” he asks, still snickering.

“Well, I mean, jesus, I’m not sure I wanna partner with someone who’s stupid enough to consider partnering with me.” Dean can feel his own lips twitching. He hates it. He thinks Rollins is charming him again.

“My question stands, then: is it just the two of us?”

Dean shrugs a little. “I mean if that’s all I can get, that’s all I can get. He said he wanted two or three. You were the first person I thought of, you’re the first person I’ve talked to about it.”

“That’s kinda sweet, really,” says Rollins, and Dean wrinkles his nose.

“Gross,” he mutters, steering with his wrist so that he can curl his fingers down against the center of his palm and dig in with relatively short nails. “Wait, wait, I got one; I got a reason you should.”

“This should be good.” Rollins twists in his seat to look at Dean head-on. “Okay, hit me.”

“Right now, everyone thinks you’re like, one kind of person, right?” Dean asks, sitting up straighter. “You’re like, good at wrestling, decent guy, gets a bunch of cheers, whatever.”

“Is this gonna be more of your thing about how I’m really uptight?” Rollins asks. It at least sounds like Rollins is amused by the possibility.

Dean pauses, thinks over the rest of his reasoning, and says, “Only like, incidentally.”

“Gotcha.”

“Anyway, don’t interrupt me, it’ll throw me off. So you’re like, you care what people think, ‘cause you’re a good guy. We talked about this,” Dean waves a hand irritably, “but if you do this, you’ll show ‘em you’re more than just that person, more than that one guy. You’ll show them you can do things whatever way you wanna do ‘em, and that’s dangerous, to them, see, because they want guys who do whatever _they_ want.”

“Who’s _they_?” Rollins asks.

“Fuckin’ everyone, man – everyone wants you to do what they want you to do, but the interesting ones are the ones that do what’s best for them. The ones that stick around are people that got the balls to say fuck all of you, I’m doing what’s good for me, and then are good enough to back it up.”

“Huh.” Rollins stays quiet long enough that Dean wants to look over at him, but that would be admitting something he’s not ready to admit, he thinks. “I think there might’ve actually been a compliment in there somewhere.”

“I don’t know where you got this idea that I don’t think you’re good at what you do,” Dean mumbles, and he thinks he surprised Rollins from the way Rollins goes quieter than he was all of a sudden. “I just think what you do is stupid and you’re better than it. Don’t mean I think you’re bad at it. Jesus. Told you when I first got here we were the only two as good as each other.”

“I’ll remind you that the way you phrased it was that I was _almost_ as good as you,” says Rollins. Dean grumbles, but that’s a fair point.

“Yeah but I’m really, really fucking good at this, so that’s totally still a compliment.”

“You are good at this,” Rollins concedes, and Dean would look askance at him if he wasn’t driving.

“I know,” he says. He doesn’t want to let on particularly that Rollins surprised him there. “Anyway, where am I going? I lied earlier, I don't know where you live. For sure.”

“Oh,” says Rollins. “Uh, take a left two streets from now. Surprised you don’t really, you’re kind of creepy with shit like that.”

“Wow, okay,” says Dean. “You moved like six months ago, for your information, and I just haven’t been keeping track like I should.”

Rollins laughs like he doesn’t know whether he’s supposed to or not, and it’s – Dean doesn’t want to like it quite as much as he does, but, well. That’s par for the course with Seth Rollins.

“I think I should find that weirder than I do,” says Rollins. “But I think I’m already getting used to you again.”

“That mean what I think it means?” Dean asks. His hands have tightened on the steering wheel and he deliberately lets them relax.

“Depends on what you think it means,” Rollins counters. “Take a right up here. It’s only two or three blocks from where I was before. I’m on Arlington now.”

“I know the area,” says Dean. “And it sounds like it means you’re considering this idea I’ve proposed.”

“Oh, we’ve already moved on to proposals?” Rollins asks, and then he does that obnoxious laugh again, and Dean’s stomach burbles in a semi-familiar way. He hasn’t felt it in a long time, honestly, but he recognizes it, and it makes so much sense that he’s pissed off that he didn’t figure out before that his thing about Seth Rollins is, at least a little bit, a thing _for_ Seth Rollins.

Dean clears his throat. “Yeah, if I wasn’t driving, I’d get down on one knee, too,” he says. “Seth Rollins, will you take me to be your unlawfully wedded partner in fucking up the main roster of WWE?”

Rollins laughs again. “Bet you didn’t even get me a ring, you bastard.”

“I’ll get you a headband or somethin’,” says Dean. “One of them ponytail holders.”

“Okay, deal,” says Rollins, and Dean can hear that it’s more than just the conversation they were having, but Rollins clarifies anyway. “Yeah, I, yeah. Okay. Whatever this is, I’m in. I’ll do it.”

Dean’s whole body relaxes as he pulls into Rollins’ parking lot, and he has to take care not to release the heavy sigh of relief that he can feel building in his diaphragm.

“Good,” he says, turning off his car when he pulls into a parking spot. He doesn’t like to waste the gas, and anyway, he wants to be looking at Rollins for this part. “Okay, good. We can figure out the details later, if you want, it’s not, like, he said we won’t start making moves until next month at least. We got time to figure out the other shit.”

“I think we should have a third guy,” says Rollins. It’s weird to actually be looking at him now. Dean wonders if Rollins feels the same way. “Not that I don’t think we could cause some trouble just us, but if we want people to take us seriously, and just in order to have the edge on people, we should have some real muscle. Most teams these days only have two guys. If we have three, we’re already ahead of the curve.”

“Yeah, that makes sense,” says Dean, surprised by how seriously Rollins is already taking this. “You know anybody like that? I think we already pretty much established I don’t.”

“Maybe,” Rollins mutters. His eyes are far away. “I’ll have to think about it. Maybe make a couple quiet phone calls.”

“Long as it doesn’t ruin the surprise,” says Dean. “I don’t want our plan ruined ahead of time, so make sure whoever you talk to either keeps their mouth shut or don’t really know what you’re talking about.”

“Not a problem.” Rollins snaps back to the present with a nod. “I can be subtle when I need to be.”

“I know that.” Dean smiles to himself, glances out the windshield. “Should we shake on this? Or, I dunno.”

“Yeah, sure. New beginnings.” Rollins proffers his own hand first, and Dean feels, well, it’s hard to describe. He feels like there’s less air in the car than there was, like this is important in more than one way, like this matters to more than just him and more than just Rollins. His hand slips into Rollins’ with a finality he wasn’t expecting, and they shake firmly, once, twice, three times.

Dean’s palm tingles when they let go. He wants to shake his hand out to get rid of it, but Rollins might think he’s doing it for some other reason, so he doesn’t.

Rollins is smiling, too, when Dean next looks at his face, and he shakes his head while Dean watches.

“What?” Dean asks.

“Just thinking about when we first met,” says Rollins. “Nothing important. You got a phone?”

“Of course I have a phone, this isn’t the dark ages.” Dean rolls his eyes.

“You seem like the weird kind of person who wouldn’t,” says Rollins. “Like maybe you communicate exclusively with carrier pigeons.”

“I don’t even know what that means, or what that kind of person would even look like,” says Dean. He’s distracted by the way Rollins has grabbed his wrist. It’s delicate, almost, and Rollins retrieves a pen from the side pocket of his bag, jerks the cap off with his teeth, and then scribbles something down on the palm of Dean’s hand.

It’s only when Rollins lets him have his hand back that Dean can see what’s written on it. It’s a phone number, and then a dash, and then _Seth_ is written in loopy handwriting. Dean feels like he looks at it for too long, and jerks his gaze away, but still takes care not to close his fist around it.

“Text me or call me, whatever you wanna do.” Rollins shoves his hand through his hair. “I’ll keep you updated on whether or not I can find a third guy. Sound good?”

“Yeah, sounds great, actually.” Dean keeps thinking about the phone number on his palm, keeps feeling the tip of the pen against his skin, sloping lines turning into Rollins’ name. Seth seth seth seth seth—Dean shakes his head, cuts off that train of thought.

“Guess I should probably start calling you Dean now,” Rollins says, like he can read Dean’s damn thoughts, and Dean tries to look less startled by that than he is.

“Can if you want to. I answer to whatever.” Dean shrugs a shoulder. “You want me to call you Seth?”

It feels different in his mouth. Dean kind of wants to spit; there’s too much saliva in his mouth and he wants to get it out. He doesn’t. He swallows, instead.

“Call me whatever you want.” Rollins grins at him. “My name is Seth, though, so.”

“Shuddup,” grumbles Dean, pushing at Seth’s shoulder with his bare hand. “Get outta my car.”

“Since when you do you have a car, anyway?” asks Seth, as though he hasn’t heard what Dean’s just said at all. “I thought you just walked everywhere.”

“It’s not mine, technically,” says Dean. “But I’ll, y’know. I’ll put it back.”

“You’ll—“ Seth cuts himself off, closes his eyes. “Y’know, I don’t want to know. You do that. I’ll talk to you later.”

“Yes, you will.” Dean can still feel it, like a brand on his hand. “I’ll text you or whatever.”

“You do that.” Seth still looks vaguely amused, and shoves the car door open, retrieving his bag from the foot well. “Good talk, Ambrose. Dean.”

Funnily enough, it looks like his name doesn’t automatically fit right in Seth’s mouth, either, like maybe it’ll take them both a little time to get used to this, the most basic form of not hating one another.

They have time. At least a month. A month’s enough time to learn how to get along with each other like normal people.

“See you around, Dean,” says Seth. He’s leaning down to peer into the car, his bag already slung over his shoulder.

“Yeah, I’ll see you around,” Dean replies. He’s looking forward to it, even. It’s a weird fuckin’ world, he thinks, watching Seth walk back toward the apartment building and turning the car back on.

He feels like it might actually be okay, though.


	3. November 17th, 2012

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> the journey to survivor series 2012 is going to be a long one, if dean has anything to say about it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hi!! i know, i know, it's literally been more than a year since i've updated this and i'm so sorry. there were a lot of issues, all of them entirely uninteresting, from computer problems to mental health issues, to school to work, unbelievably boring, honestly, but regardless, i have to apologize for how long this work is taking me. i hope people are still interested in it, because i genuinely love this chapter, and these boys, always and forever. ♥

_  
**November 17th, 2012**  
_  
“Get your feet off my dashboard,” is the first thing Seth says to Dean when he gets back into the driver’s seat. He doesn’t even put his seatbelt on, just looks at Dean pointedly for like a thousand years until Dean grumbles and drops his feet down to the floor of the car.

“You know,” he says, taking the plastic bag that Seth shoves at him while Seth finally fastens his seatbelt, “you could be a little nicer to me. I woke up at fuckin’ ass o’clock to get to your stupid house this morning.”

“It’s not my fault that my childhood home is closer to Indianapolis than yours or Roman’s,” says Seth. He still doesn’t start the car, though, looking at Dean with mild irritation.

“What?” Dean asks as he fishes into the bag now in his lap.

“Put your seatbelt back on?” Seth prompts. “I don’t even know why you took it off. I was in there for like a minute and a half.”

“Couldn’t get my feet on the dash with my seatbelt fastened,” Dean responds. He deliberately talks with a mouthful of hash brown, just to see the disgust on Seth’s face. 

“So you inconvenienced yourself just to annoy me,” says Seth. He raises his eyebrows until Dean fastens his seatbelt with mocking care.

“I’ll do a lot more than inconvenience myself to annoy you,” Dean points out. He wipes greasy fingers on his jeans while Seth pulls out of the Speedway parking lot. “You’re cute when you’re annoyed,” he jibes.

Seth rolls his eyes, and reaches into one of the cup-holders to retrieve a frankly outrageous cup of coffee, bigger than Dean’s whole head, he thinks. It’s iced, too, instead of hot, even though it’s November and chilly. Dean’s annoyed by that and doesn’t know why, which is almost more annoying.

“Thanks,” Seth says, and then his lips purse around the straw in his drink.

“Remind me of this plan again,” says Dean. “Why aren’t we all just meeting there?”

Seth rolls his eyes again. “It was your plan,” he points out. “Kinda suspicious if the three of us all show up at the Indianapolis airport even though none of us are scheduled to be there? You made it sound really reasonable when you called me and told me about it at three in the morning.”

“Eh. I’d had a lot of whiskey. Just sounds inconvenient now,” Dean snorts. “Where are we meeting the big guy?”

“Chicago,” says Seth, changing lanes. “Should take maybe four hours from here. Give or take. Depends on traffic.”

“Jesus,” Dean groans, slouching in his seat and shoving half of a bacon, egg, and cheese bagel into his mouth. He chews obnoxiously, and Seth’s nose wrinkles even though he’s not looking at Dean. “Guess we better get to know each other better on the way there then, huh?”

“Guess so,” says Seth. He glances at Dean. “Any burning questions?”

“Nope,” Dean says, and then he snaps his fingers. “Oh shit, yeah. One. Who the fuck told you your hair looked good like that?”

Seth reaches over and punches Dean in the shoulder with his third or fourth eye roll of the morning. Dean’s on a roll. “Shut up, I like it. You know how many guys there are with long, dark hair in NXT right now? Hell, Roman’s one of them. I want to be distinct. I want people to know who I am.”

“I don’t think anybody’s gonna mistake you for Roman any time soon, buddy, ‘less you put on four inches and forty pounds.” Dean takes his next bite more carefully, swallowing it and then saying, “I think you’re pretty distinctive already.”

“That is because you’re obsessed with me,” Seth says dryly, offering Dean the tiniest twitch of a smile. “For some reason.”

“Alright, okay, let’s not just throw words around without knowing what they mean,” Dean grumbles. “Just ‘cause I got eyes and can tell you’re good at this shit don’t mean I got a problem.”

“You definitely have a problem,” says Seth. Dean doesn’t like this. He’s the one who tosses out cute little funny jabs at Seth, not the other way around. “Just saying, you spent your entire time in developmental chasing me around.”

“Can’t chase someone who’s not running away from you,” says Dean. He throws a tortilla chip at Seth’s head for good measure, a waste of the already only half-full container of nachos in the bag. “This can be an annoying four hours for you or it can be—“

“—annoying in a slightly different way?” Seth asks. Dean throws another chip at him. “Okay! Okay,” Seth laughs. “We’ll talk about something else. How was your flight here?”

“Irritating,” says Dean. He drops the little paper basket of nachos between them in a silent offering, and then leans forward to pull open the glovebox. “Flight attendant thought I was on something, I think, kept following me to the bathroom and shit.”

“Maybe she was hoping you’d ask her to join the mile high club with you,” says Seth.

Dean looks at him in consideration, and raises his eyebrows when Seth looks back after his momentary silence.

“What?” Seth asks, another one of those little smiles twitching his lips. “You gonna tell me you’re not that kinda guy?”

“Nah,” says Dean. He rolls the words around in his brain before he says them. “Just, she’d be barkin’ up the wrong tree, if y’know what I mean.”

He watches Seth figure out what that means, the smallest furrow between his brows before his expression clears.

“Oh. Oh! Oh, wow.” Seth shakes his head. “Okay. Wow.”

“Really not that shocking,” Dean mumbles. He feels itchy. Maybe this is one of those things you have to disclose to people before you become a tag team. Dean doesn’t know. He’s only ever really been in one tag team, and he never had to tell Sami.

“No, that’s not – I’m just surprised. I wouldn’t have guessed that. I don’t, like, care, or anything. Or I do care? If that’s, if that’s what you want, I just – it’s not, you know—“

“Please shut the fuck up, oh my god,” says Dean, rubbing his temples. “I get it, please don’t like, start hanging rainbow flags in the locker room.”

Seth laughs at that, and seems to relax a little. “I wasn’t going to, that’s not what I was saying. I just meant, you know, it’s fine. I’m not… going to get mad? About it?”

“Wouldn’t’ve told you ‘bout it if I thought you would,” Dean notes. “Got a pretty good eye for who’s gonna have a problem and who isn’t.”

“Yeah, I’d imagine you do. Well, getting to know each other?” Seth offers.

Dean laughs, then, surprised, and rolls his shoulders. “Getting to know each other,” he agrees. “Want a hash brown?”

Seth hesitates, then says, “Yeah, fuck it,” and holds his hand out for Dean to deposit a greasy potato cake into.

“I can’t wait for you to get fat,” says Dean. “Being the brains of this operation is gonna get boring, so at some point, you’re gonna have to trade with me so I can be the pretty one for a while.”

“You’re an asshole,” Seth replies, crumpling his paper wrapper with one hand and throwing it at Dean’s head without looking. “Maybe I’m already the brains and you just don’t know it.”

“Nah,” Dean answers. He shoves the balled-up wrapper into the bottom of the bag. “You’re definitely the looks. I guess Reigns is kind of a looker, too, though. He’s got better hair than you, but then again, so does anybody over the age of fifteen.”

“I think you’re secretly just jealous,” says Seth. “You wish you could have cool hair like me.”

He tosses his hair dramatically, the wind blowing it off his face.

“Okay, say that again, but imagine me with your fuckin’ hair this time,” Dean says. Seth takes one glance at him and snorts, reaching into one of the cup holders to get his sunglasses and flick them on.

“Good point,” he admits. “Maybe I should’ve done it pink instead.”

Dean snaps his head around, eyes narrowed at Seth. He does his best to see into his brain, and when that doesn’t work, notes the twitching at the corner of Seth’s mouth. “Someone’s been doing their fucking homework.”

Seth shrugs a shoulder, retrieving his gigantic coffee and taking a slug through the straw. “Guy not allowed to study up on an opponent?” he asks.

“Not when it’s me,” Dean answers immediately. “I’m gonna need you to forget everything you know about me immediately, starting with my pink hair.”

Seth hums in consideration. “I thought this was a getting to know each other car ride?” he asks. “I, uh, I think maybe it’s a little unfair if I know nothing about you when I didn’t even need to give you directions to my parents’ house?”

“Okay, you fucker—“ 

Seth laughs, something wild and unashamed about it, his nose all scrunched up. He has stupid teeth. There’s a gap in between the front ones.

Oh, _hell_ no. Dean shuts that shit down immediately. Definitely not, and definitely not right now.

“First of all, it’s not my fault your parents don’t know how to delete their information off the internet, okay – if I can Google it, that’s not my fault.”

“You don’t know how to save a contact in your phone, but you know how to find someone’s address on the internet?” Seth asks. Dean’s not a big fan of his tone.

“Those are two different things, asshole,” Dean grumbles. “For one thing, phones are more complicated than computers. Every time I get a new phone, I gotta find where the stupid contacts list is. Don’t gotta fuckin’ worry about that with a computer. If I can figure out how to open Google, I’m covered.”

“You’re so weird, honestly,” says Seth. Dean’s not sure if that’s supposed to be a compliment or an insult or just a regular old observation. 

“What’s that supposed to mean?” he asks. He makes sure to insert enough suspicious outrage in his voice to show Seth not to answer this incorrectly.

Seth hesitates. “I’m not gonna say it right, and then you’re gonna get pissed at me,” he warns, “and I don’t want to spend four hours in a car with you if you’re gonna be pissed the whole time. I’ll stop somewhere to use the bathroom and you’ll steal my car.”

“It’s not technically your car,” Dean points out. “So it wouldn’t be stealing if I just, like, drove it back to the rental place. That’d just be funny.”

“For you,” says Seth. “It’d be funny for you, and really inconvenient for me.”

“I’m really not hearing any incentives not to do this,” says Dean. He shifts in his seat, considers putting his feet back on the dash regardless of his discomfort, then sighs. “Alright, hit me. I promise not to get pissed or whatever. Unless you really fuckin’ deserve it. Believe it or not, spending four hours in a car pissed off with someone doesn’t sound real appealing to me, either.”

“Just remember you promised,” says Seth. “I just – you’re weird. But you’re not? You say things all the time, every conversation I’ve ever had with you has been so damn confusing because you say things that are just, they’re just weird. They make no sense and half the time I think you’re just saying them because you know it’s frustrating.”

Dean snorts. “Half the time I _am_ just saying shit because I know it’ll make your face go all sulky and shit,” he says.

“Well, yeah, you’re a dick, I get that,” Seth dismisses. Dean almost laughs, but manages to hold it back. “But the thing is that once you explain whatever it is you said that made no sense, suddenly it makes more sense than whatever I’d been thinking my whole life. Like just now, with the phones being more confusing than computers. That makes no sense, but the way you explained it, it does. Or – when you were telling me about the difference between cat and dog people. I spent my whole life thinking the difference was one thing, and I have a two minute conversation with you and suddenly I don’t know why I never thought about it that way.”

“Ain’t my fault you don’t think about shit right,” Dean defends, even though he’s not sure Seth’s actually saying something that he needs to defend himself from. Defense is just his natural state, so he does it automatically.

“No, that’s not what I’m saying, I’m not saying it’s a bad thing,” Seth says. He glances at Dean and then looks back out to the road. “I’m not sure what it is. It made me angry before. When you were just some asshole I didn’t know. Now, I think maybe it’s something I need. I think maybe I need someone who will make me think about stuff differently. I get too used to thinking one way sometimes.”

“Everyone does.” Dean makes himself talk normally, forces his voice to sound neutral because he doesn’t know how else to respond to what Seth is saying. It sounds too much like a compliment, and Dean has no idea how to deal with those. “Once you get to, like, twenty, it gets real hard to change the way you think. Lots of people are still the same exact person they were when they were fifteen. They don’t care enough to move past that. They’ll learn longer words for the same old shit and call it progress. Growing up’s more than that.”

“Are you the same person you were when you were fifteen?” Seth asks.

Dean snorts. “I’m not even the same person I was fifteen minutes ago,” he says. 

“I always thought once you got to a certain age, like, twenty-five, maybe, you were basically the person you’re going to be for the rest of your life,” says Seth.

“You’ve always been a fuckin’ idiot, then,” Dean says. “Once you got to twenty-five, you’d figure that out anyway, but it’s better if you figure it out before then so you can stop waiting for something that ain’t gonna happen. There’s no magic age where you’re never gonna change again. You don’t ever get to a point where you’re who you’re gonna be forever. That doesn’t exist. Everybody’s always changing.”

“Yeah, I know that, I meant the important things, you know? Like, you know who you are in the ways that matter, not—not that you won’t go through anything else, just that the base is there. What everything else builds on.”

“Nah,” says Dean. Part of him thinks he should shut the fuck up, let Seth think what he’s gonna think, because it doesn’t matter. Another part of him, though, remembers that Seth _likes_ this, likes it when Dean challenges his worldview. He said he liked it, anyway. “Nothing’s ever for sure. Ever. You can think you’ll never change, that there’s part of you that’s always gonna be one thing, but you’ll think that until something changes it.”

“So you don’t think there’s anything about you that’s like, always gonna be the way it is?” Seth asks. He’s frowning, but just a little.

“Nope,” Dean says. He shrugs a shoulder. “Not a thing.”

“Huh.” 

There’s a moment where neither of them says anything, Dean waiting and Seth thinking.

Finally, Dean prompts, “Guessin’ you do?”

“I thought so,” says Seth. “But this is what I was talking about. Now I don’t know, because what you said makes sense. How do I know something won’t change and I’ll, I don’t know. I love wrestling. I’ve always loved wrestling. I thought I always would. But now how do I know something won’t happen and I’ll hate it one day?”

“Maybe you will,” Dean says. He shrugs again. “Maybe you won’t. I’m not saying everything you think you know’s definitely gonna change. I’m just saying that you can’t say for sure it won’t.”

“Yeah,” says Seth, but it’s not an agreement as much as a way to make sound, a noise more than a word. Dean doesn’t prompt him again. He lets Seth mull that over. Sometimes the best conversation you can have with someone is no conversation at all, but that’s another life lesson Dean’s going to have to drop on Seth at a later time.

He returns to his nachos, dunking chips into cheese with gusto, and he notes that after a moment, Seth begins to retrieve chips of his own from the container. He doesn’t dip them in the cheese, though. Loser.

“You know anything about Reigns?” Dean finally says, an offer of sorts to move on from their previous conversation. 

“Not much,” Seth admits. “Enough that I trust him to stick with us, however far this goes. Some of his family history. Mostly the stuff everybody knows about him. We only had a couple conversations, but he seems like a solid guy.”

“Long as he doesn’t make shit harder for us,” Dean mumbles. “If I gotta try to navigate his personality when I’m already dealing with yours, I’m gonna be pissed.”

“He seemed nice when I talked to him,” says Seth. “Kinda quiet. Maybe he’s shy.”

“That’s fuckin’ hilarious,” Dean says. “I would not have guessed that.”

“Me either.” Seth flashes him a sideways smile and Dean wishes he could beat the butterflies in his stomach to death.

“How much farther we got?” he asks, grabbing the little tablet from the dashboard and busying himself with tapping it like he has any idea what he’s doing.

“Well, we’ve been going for about fifteen minutes,” says Seth wryly. “So about three and a half more hours until Chicago.”

“This is the worst plan I’ve ever had,” Dean gripes. “Why’d you agree to this? We shoulda just flown.”

“Not a great surprise reveal if one of us ran into Ryback or someone at the airport when we got in,” reminds Seth. “We’re still trying to maintain some semblance of secrecy here. Come on, you’re great at strategy.”

“Only when there’s immediate gratification,” says Dean, squinting at the tablet, trying to figure out why the destination has switched from Chicago to Calcutta. “Long term? Not my thing. I don’t have the patience to wait shit out.”

“That sounds a hell of a lot like you’re admitting you’ve got a weakness, Ambrose,” Seth replies, and then he makes a face when the GPS lady’s voice chirps that they’re supposed to take the next exit. “What’d you do? We’re definitely not supposed to get off here.”

“Look, just keep driving and I’ll figure it out by the time we get there.” Dean closes one eye and jabs a thumb at the screen. The directions reroute back to Davenport. Well, that’s closer, at least. “These things are like magic, right, as long as we put in the right shit at some point, they’ll reconfigure or whatever? I got this.”

“Just put in the airport in Chicago, where it says destination,” Seth directs without taking his eyes off of the road. “Or even Chicago in general, and then we can get to the airport from there.”

“Destination,” Dean mumbles. He scans the screen to find the word, then taps it and carefully types the word ‘chicago’ with one forefinger. He selects from the list of cities that pop up (though he’s tempted to pick the Chicago Rd in Warren, MI that shows underneath the city in Illinois), and the GPS beeps twice, then settles back into their original route. “There!” he exclaims. “Told you I’d fix it.”

“Yeah,” says Seth, unimpressed. “You sure fixed it. Thanks, champ.”

“You’re welcome,” Dean replies. He props the GPS back in its holster. “All right. I spy, with my little eye—”

“Definitely not,” Seth interrupts. “I’m not playing I Spy while I’m driving.”

“You’re no fun,” Dean says, drumming his fingers on his leg. “What made you pick Reigns?” he asks.

“Huh?” Seth asks, and then he frowns, clearly mulling it over. Dean fuckin’ hates when people do that. 

“Don’t say huh if you heard me,” he grumbles, shifting in his seat. 

“I didn’t – okay,” says Seth, with a roll of his eyes. “Uh, it wasn’t really any one thing. I knew him from before, kind of, FCW stuff. I’d talked to him before. Didn’t have a ton of friends to pick from, anyway.”

“Yeah, ‘cause you’re a loser,” says Dean, half-distracted. “You ever even had like a conversation with him?”

“Yeah, I mean. Yeah.” Seth shrugs a shoulder, glancing through the back window before he shifts lanes. “Not like deepest secrets conversations or anything, but we’d talked. I knew he was a good guy. Worried about not being taken seriously because of his family. Likes dogs. Built like a fucking train.”

Dean makes a noise of assent. “Family, huh?” he asks. “You used that, didn’t you?”

“What do you mean?” Seth asks, his words slow and measured. He sounds just a little too pointedly inquisitive for Dean to believe it.

“That list of things you just told me, you just like, shoved something to totally use against him in with a bunch of shit that doesn’t matter like I wouldn’t notice.” Dean hooks a thumb into the hole in the thigh of his jeans and tosses a glance at Seth, whose brow is furrowed.

Seth doesn’t say anything immediately, just squints out the windshield.

“I think you’re a little more conniving than you let on,” says Dean. His own tone isn’t accusing, or at least he’s not trying to make it that way. Just matter-of-fact.

“Interesting observation,” says Seth. He sounds half-unsure of what Dean is waiting for him to say. 

“True observation,” Dean says.

“I don’t think I let on that I’m much of anything,” Seth says.

Dean laughs, a little chuckle from the middle of his chest. “Sure,” he allows, relaxing back in his seat. “I was gonna say you surprised me, but you didn’t really. It’s a good thing,” he adds.

Seth’s grip on the steering wheel gets less white-knuckled. “It.. is?” he asks. “Only, the last time you told me that I was doing something like that, you attacked me in the ring like the next week.”

“Well, that was then, and we’re best friends now,” says Dean, flicking Seth’s elbow when he makes an amused noise. “It’s a good thing when we’re on the same team.”

“Really.” It’s not quite a question. “You’re not lying to me? If you jump me in the ring in two weeks, I’m gonna be pissed off that you messed this up for us.”

“I’m not, I’m not,” Dean assures with a huff. “Nah. I like it now, ‘cause now I can use it to my advantage if you’re a squirrelly little shithead.”

Seth laughs at that, his stupid gap-toothed wrinkly-nosed one that makes Dean want to knock himself out.

“I’m glad I can be of use to you,” Seth says. “What else are teammates for?”

“What d’you think of Reigns, then?” Dean asks, cutting Seth off when he starts to protest that he already answered that. “Not in general. Specifically with this. We both know I got no problem bein’ a motherfucker. And apparently you’re more of a shifty bastard than I thought. What about him?”

“He’s got something to prove,” says Seth after a moment of thought. “He feels like he does, anyway. He wants to prove something to himself and to his family and to anyone who knows his family, so… everyone. Dangerous man, who wants to prove himself to the world.”

“Smart man, though?” Dean prompts. “Or just determined?”

“Right now, either works,” Seth says. “He’s the brawn, right? For now, at least. Don’t get me wrong, I like him. Think he’s a good guy. Think maybe we could even be friends down the line. But right now, here when we’re just starting, he’s…” He trails off.

“A means to an end,” Dean finishes for him. He feels sort of like he’s never been more connected to Seth, and there was a time when he was at his most unhealthily obsessed that he’d started having dreams about Seth – not that he’s ever told or will ever tell Seth about that. “Cold-blooded, Rollins.”

“It’s not, I’m not—” Seth starts to say, then sighs.

Dean lets himself smile, peering over at Seth with his head tilted against his hand. He opens his mouth, then closes it, then lets that half-cautious brazenness in his stomach talk.

“It’s pretty fuckin’ hot, actually.”

Seth laughs again, like an explosion, like he can’t help it, and Dean’s heart starts beating a little faster, or it skips a beat, or some bullshit, some bullshit that doesn’t happen in real life but Seth Rollins is a coldhearted crafty son of a bitch and Dean wishes that was less of a turn-on.

“Thanks,” Seth says, the ghosts of that laughter still floating around the edges of his mouth. He looks over at Dean for just a second, half-smiling, his big dumb doe-eyes dancing. Dean contemplates reaching over and grabbing the wheel to send them careening into the guard rail.

“Sure thing, man. Let me know if you ever need someone to tell you if you being a fuckin’ asshole is annoying or not, ‘cause I’ll do that job for free,” says Dean. He wishes he had gum. It feels like his teeth are jittering in their sockets. “You got any gum?” he asks abruptly.

“I think so, yeah,” says Seth. He doesn’t question the change in subject. “Check the other bag, the one that didn’t have food in it. I think I grabbed some while I was at the register.”

Dean grabs for the other bag that he’d dropped onto the floor, rummaging through it. There’s a car charger, a wad of napkins, about fifty cents in change, and—yes, thank fuck, a pack of gum. Juicyfruit, but beggars can’t be choosers. He tears the top of the packet off and shoves about three sticks into his mouth.

“Did you even take the foil off of those, or…?” 

Dean spits a crumpled gob of silver into one of the napkins and doesn’t respond.

“You’re a really weird human being,” Seth mutters, shaking his head, but he doesn’t look too stressed about it. He holds out his hand. “Give me one.”

“Say please,” Dean garbles around his gum.

“I’m not saying please for my own gum that I got with my own money,” says Seth. He wriggles his fingers. “Gimme.”

“Not until you say please, buck-o. We use our fucking manners in this car, and you’re driving and can’t do shit about it, so say please.” Dean plucks a stick from the packet and holds it just out of Seth’s reach.

Seth looks unimpressed. “Give me,” he enunciates.

“Say please,” Dean enunciates back.

Seth lets out a sigh that sounds far too put upon considering Dean is only asking him to have some basic human decency. “Please,” he says, in a way that sounds very impolite to Dean’s ears. But he did do it, so Dean even unwraps the stick for him, placing it into Seth’s palm.

“How hard was that, huh?” Dean asks with exaggerated condescension.

“Fuck you,” says Seth without missing a beat, shoving the stick into his mouth. Dean laughs, can’t help it, but cuts it off before it’ll sound too much like he thinks Seth is funny at all.

“We were talking about Reigns,” says Dean.

“You can probably call him Roman,” Seth says.

“Don’t wanna,” dismisses Dean. “Too familiar. Haven’t met him yet. We’re not friends.”

“Teammates, though,” Seth points out.

“Not the same thing.” Dean shakes his head. “You actually think he’s gonna care if I call him by his last name?”

“I think it’ll be weird if you call me by my first name and him by his last,” Seth says, and he’s actually got a point.

“We haven’t even met up with him yet,” Dean mutters, which isn’t an argument, and Seth knows it, from his victorious silence.

“All the better reason to practice now,” says Seth. “So. We were talking about Roman,” he prompts.

“Yeah, we were talking about fuckin’ Roman.” Dean doesn’t like the way it sounds in his voice. “So you think this is gonna work with him.”

“No,” Seth says. His voice is dripping with sarcasm. “I am risking my entire career with this company that I’ve been dreaming of being a part of since I was a kid by trying to join a group with someone I don’t think I’ll be able to team with.”

“Well, it’s not just you in this outfit, is it, Mr. Center of the Goddamn Universe?” Dean asks. He flicks Seth’s elbow again for fun. “You think this is gonna work, like, me and him are gonna get along?”

“Oh.” Seth makes a considering sound. “Well. Yeah. I don’t think you would’ve come to me about it at all if you weren’t gonna make it work no matter what. That’s not you, to not do something you put your mind to.”

“Well aren’t you a fucking charmer,” says Dean. That sounded like a compliment and it makes his insides squirm unpleasantly. “Yeah, guess so, anyway. I’m just saying, if he fucks this up for us, I’m holding you personally responsible, so keep that in mind.”

“I’m not his babysitter,” Seth replies with clear exasperation. “You can’t hold me responsible for something another grown man does.”

“I sure can, look who you’re talking to.” Dean spits another bit of foil into the napkin like bastardized chewing tobacco. “I’ll blame you for whatever the fuck I want to and you can’t stop me.”

“You’re… the worst,” says Seth, only he doesn’t actually sound that upset. He sounds resigned, kind of, but mostly he just sounds fond, maybe, and Dean wants to, wants to step on his face or some shit. “You’re just the worst.”

“Don’t you forget it,” says Dean. He waits a moment, then says, “Hey, what would you do if I stuck this gum in that stupid ass part of your hair? Would you get mad?”

“I’d get pretty mad, yeah,” says Seth. He shoots Dean a sideways narrow-eyed look.

“But you’d have to cut that part of your hair off,” Dean offers. “So I’d be doing you a favor.”

“Absolutely not,” says Seth. He shifts closer to his door like that’ll get him far away enough to discourage Dean.

“It’d be for your own good,” says Dean. He’s chewing slowly, carefully, thoughtfully. “Can’t go on TV with your hair looking like that, honestly. You’d regret it in three years when you’ve realized how fucking stupid your hair looked.”

“Dean,” Seth warns.

Dean reaches into his mouth with just the tips of his fingers and the car actually swerves as though Seth thinks maybe he can drive away from Dean even though they’re both still in the car. 

“I will crash,” Seth says. “I will kill us both, don’t think I won’t.”

“You’re no fun,” Dean repeats, but he drops his hand back into his lap.

“Yeah, that’s me, resident fun-sucker,” Seth says, relaxing. He keeps one hand hovering slightly between them, which is smart, since Dean spits the gum into his hand and darts it toward Seth fast enough that if Seth hadn’t had a hand there, it would have gone straight into Seth’s hair.

Instead, Seth somehow grabs the gum from Dean’s hand and throws it out the window, all without taking his eyes off the road.

“You’re disgusting,” Seth says, making a face. “Now my hand’s got your spit all over it.”

“Can’t believe you’re calling me disgusting when you’re the one with my spit all over your hand,” Dean replies. He takes another stick of gum out and takes the more traditional route of unwrapping it before he chews it this time.

Seth sighs heavily. “How much longer until Chicago?”

Dean checks the GPS even though he thinks it’s probably a rhetorical question. “Three hours and seventeen minutes,” he says. “You think Reigns would mind if I put gum in his hair?”

“I think he probably heard you say that from the plane,” Seth says. “His ears probably perked up, and he got this weird urge to strangle someone.”

“Man’s got good hair. Gotta admit that.” Dean shakes his head. “Doesn’t make me like him any more, but it’s true.”

“You don’t even know him. You’ve never talked to him. How do you know whether you like him or not?” Seth asks.

“I don’t like anyone,” Dean replies. “I don’t even like you that much and I’m hanging the hopes of my career on you.”

“You like me a little,” says Seth. “Or is obsession not the same thing as liking someone?”

“I thought we agreed not to use that word anymore,” says Dean. He feels hot and disagreeable whenever Seth says that word, even though he’s used it himself, and about Seth. Something about Seth using it, though, feels like it’s something Dean should feel ashamed about. Dean doesn’t ever feel ashamed. About anything.

He doesn’t like that Seth keeps making him feel things he’s never felt before.

“What would you do if I pissed out the window?” he asks instead of dwelling on that.

“Be angry,” says Seth. “Before you ask any more questions like that, I’ll tell you now: The answer to all of them is that I would be angry.”

“No fun,” Dean says again, shaking his head. The spiky warm feeling is fading from his stomach. “Are you gonna be like this the whole time we’re a team? Is this what I have to look forward to?”

Seth gives him another one of those sideways looks with the smiling eyes and the little curl of his mouth. “Yep.”

Dean doesn’t like how that makes him feel, either. He waits a second, then spits the new chewed gum into his hand and goes for Seth’s hair again.

In all the commotion, he ends up with his own gum stuck in his ear, but he mostly forgets about that stupid feeling, so maybe it all evens out.


End file.
